


Unquiet Ghosts

by MadameValadrien



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angsty Ghosts, Byleth the Ghost Whisperer, F/M, Family Feels, Female My Unit | Byleth, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Ghosts, Implied Sylvain Jose Gautier/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21565507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameValadrien/pseuds/MadameValadrien
Summary: Her perception enhanced by her fusion with Sothis, Byleth soon discovers that Dimitri is indeed haunted by the ghosts of his past. Just not in the way that he thinks.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 9
Kudos: 328





	Unquiet Ghosts

The ruins of Garreg Mach were still and silent in the predawn gloom. Broken walls and hollowed doorways loomed like indifferent sentinels, their shadows creating outposts of inky blackness in the receding dark. Of the living who had come once again to make this place their own, there was no sign - they had retreated to their tents and bedrolls, ceding Garreg Mach’s halls once again to its ghosts.

Byleth was no longer sure which group she belonged with.

Her footsteps were nearly silent as she made her way through the deserted garden. Sleep had proved elusive - ironic, for one who had apparently slept five years. She hoped it wouldn’t be another five years before she slept again.

It wasn’t entirely a jest. Something was different.  _ She _ was different, beyond just the jarring reality of a half-decade of missed time. The world around her felt  _ fuller _ , somehow, since she awoke, as if details she had missed her whole life were suddenly snapping into focus. If she closed her eyes, if she  _ opened herself _ , she was aware of the birds that roosted in the bare rafters above her, of the mice that scurried in the bushes, of the ants making an orderly march at the base of the wall.

If she admitted it to herself, she was aware of more still - that soft breathing was her students, still asleep in their camp. That tossing and turning was Felix, his rest troubled by the dread and sorrow he would never allow the others to see. That whispered prayer was Gilbert in his own tent, awake and on his knees to make a monk’s offering of orisons to the morning dark.

That harsh breathing in the cathedral was the cold stranger who wore Dimitri’s face.

Byleth shut herself off then, determinedly ignoring the pull of the world around her. She didn’t understand why she had awoken with this strange new awareness, wasn’t sure she liked it. It was one more thing that separated her from the others, one more reminder that she was less than human, or  _ more _ than human, or perhaps even both at once. The thoughts always added a dull ache of loneliness to her heart.

The Ashen Demon wouldn’t have minded, perhaps. The Ashen Demon hadn’t  _ felt _ . But Byleth Eisner did. Sometimes she thought the Demon had had the right of it.

It had seemed different, at the Academy, when once-muted emotions had begun to awake in her like bright spring flowers. Then it had been like color was added to the world, each day a new experience. For the first time she had stories to tell her father of her adventures with the class she had come to think of as  _ friends _ , as Sothis offered commentary only Byleth could hear. For the first time, she’d felt her pulse pick up speed every time one of those friends glanced at her, blue eyes filled with warmth and a faint blush dusting his cheeks.

But now Sothis was gone. And so was her father. And so, it seemed, was the kind, loving youth who’d shared a clumsy stolen kiss with her on the eve of their final battle. Perhaps it would all be easier to bear, if she didn’t truly know what she’d lost.

She realized, suddenly, that her feet had taken her to the ruined cathedral. Byleth hesitated then, pensively watching the broken facade.

She didn’t want to see him. Or rather, she didn’t want to see the cruel man who would be skulking amidst the rocks, his achingly familiar eye dark with hatred, or fixed wildly on something he alone could see. She wanted  _ her _ Dimitri, thoughtful, gentle, shyly affectionate. Above all things,  _ kind _ , to everyone he encountered. The Dimitri who was dead.

She couldn’t believe that. She  _ wouldn’t _ . Suffering could change a person, and merciful goddess, he had suffered. But Byleth refused to simply accept that Dimitri was too damaged to recover, refused to accept his own insistence that there could be nothing for him but perdition.

She had to keep trying, no matter how much it hurt. Byleth set her jaw and stepped through the shattered doors.

She stopped short. Dimitri was there as she knew he would be, kneeling on the rubble-strewn floor pleading softly with his ghosts. He wasn’t alone.

The golden-haired man beside him was a stranger to her, though something about him seemed familiar. He knelt beside the shivering prince, speaking urgently, though Dimitri paid him no heed. Both of them ignored Byleth as she drew closer.

“Please, Father,” Dimitri begged, his voice hoarse and broken. “Please don’t look at me like that. I haven’t forgotten you. I  _ will _ avenge you, I just need more time - “ a sob caught in his throat then, as his head lowered further. “I know, I  _ know _ I have failed you, I know you deserve better from your son, please, please forgive me, I  _ swear _ you will have revenge…”

The stranger leaned closer, his voice gaining volume to Byleth’s ears. “Enough with this  _ revenge _ , Mitya, this is no wish of mine! Whatever apparition you see is  _ false _ .” His voice was heavy with grief, and he sounded tired. “I’ve told you, my little wolf. There is nothing to  _ forgive _ . I want only for you to know joy again.” Dimitri ignored him, not even reacting as the man reached out to lay his hand on the prince’s trembling one.

Byleth’s eyes flicked between them. She’d already learned the hard way that startling Dimitri meant narrowly avoiding a lance to the throat. But she’d also learned that any attempts to contradict his ghosts elicited growled denials and insults. It was almost as if he wasn’t aware of the other man at all.

The stranger noticed her then, eyes briefly glancing her direction before returning to Dimitri. He started suddenly, and swung his head up to met her gaze. They stared at each other.

“You can see me,” he said finally, Dimitri’s sky-blue eyes going wide in his familiar face, and suddenly the pieces clicked in place.

“King Lambert,” she whispered.

Dimitri did not hear her, his whole being focused on the apparition that only he could see. Whatever figment of Lambert his mind had conjured up was not his father’s ghost. She could know that for certain; his father’s true ghost was standing in front of her.

She might have wondered once if she was simply going mad as well, but now she knew better. Now that she knew what to look for, she could sense Lambert’s presence as sure as Dimitri’s own.

Lambert himself seemed unsure of what to make of her. There were things he wanted to say, she could see that, but his anguished gaze was wrenched again back down to his son.

Byleth held out her hand. “There’s nothing to do, when he gets like this,” she said softly, so softly that only a ghost might hear. “Nothing but wait for it to pass.”

“He should not be alone through this,” the fallen king answered. His eyes were locked on Dimitri’s shaking shoulders. “I will not leave him to suffer untended.”

There was no rebuke in his voice, but Byleth felt it all the same. Her heart felt heavy as she watched the mad prince on the cathedral’s floor. Somewhere in there, under the rage and grief and guilt, would she still find her beloved?

She settled down on the floor herself, distant enough that she would not disturb Dimitri, and gave Lambert a quiet nod. They could keep vigil together, until Dimitri’s demons let him be.

***

She saw the king often after that. It was as if, now that she was aware of him, whatever veil had hidden him from her eyes was now pulled away. He was not always at Dimitri’s side, though Byleth did not know if it was because he lacked the strength to do so or if some ghostly business drew him away. Perhaps his heart could only handle so much sorrow. If that were the case, Byleth envied him his ability to simply disapparate.

She could do no such thing - her students needed her, the Kingdom needed her, the world needed her. Dimitri was coldly adamant that he did  _ not _ need her, but she included him in her obligations all the same. Wartime was good for the mercenary business, and there would be plenty of lucrative opportunities if she pulled stakes and returned to her old life. But Byleth was not the Ashen Demon any longer, and she could not simply turn her back on all the people she had come to care about.

And so she led councils, and penned strategies, and kept her face neutral when Dimitri sneered and told her that she and all the others were simply tools for his revenge. Even if he truly were broken beyond repair, this wasn’t just about him any more. She’d heard stories from the others, of how the Kingdom’s people suffered under Cornelia’s imperial rule. Byleth’s priority now was to save those people, and restore peace to the Faerghus territories.

It didn’t matter that Dimitri snarled that such things were inconsequential beside his revenge. The Dimitri she loved would have wanted her to put his people first.

And so she grew accustomed to the sight of King Lambert hovering at his son’s side, trying vainly to convince the prince to join the war councils and accept help and listen to his advisors. Listen to  _ her _ . He must have known by now that it was futile, that Dimitri could not hear him, but he persisted anyway, hoping to uncover a flicker of the prince who had been.

Byleth supposed she and the king weren’t so different.

***

“Thank you.”

Byleth startled, the words drawing her out of her reverie. Lambert had appeared seated beside her, watching the view from the Archbishop’s broken windows.

“For what, Your Highness?” She couldn’t help the surprise in her voice - he acknowledged her sometimes, when she saw him with Dimitri, but never before had he sought her out.

“For watching over my son. For trying to keep him safe. For…trying to bring him back to himself. I know…” Lambert trailed off and sighed, blue eyes glued to the horizon. “I know he does not make it easy.”

“No,” she agreed quietly. “He doesn’t. But I have to try.”

It was quiet for a beat, and her eyes slid over to phantom king. “He thinks he sees you.”

“I know.” Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Byleth though Lambert suddenly looked older. “My little wolf has always had a gentle heart. I fear…I fear what he witnessed at Duscur was too much for it. What I couldn’t protect him from.”

Without thinking, Byleth laid a hand on his arm. She was surprised when it connected, his touch cool but not unpleasant. Another facet, perhaps, of Sothis’s strange powers that now were hers.

“You did the best you could,” she told him. “No one could have known what would happen.”

“I  _ should _ have known,” Lambert answered bitterly. “I knew the changes I was making to the government would anger some of the nobility. I should have realized they might go further than simply writing me letters of protest.” He sighed again. “And now Dimitri pays the price for my hubris.”

They were silent again, watching the fading sun paint the skies crimson. It was Lambert who broke the silence this time.

“How is it that you can see me?” He sounded more curious than anything.

“I’m not sure,” Byleth confessed. She considered how to phrase it. “I was…blessed by the goddess -”

“Yes, in the Sealed Forest,” Lambert interrupted with a trace of amusement. “I was there for that part. But you couldn’t see me afterward, at least not at first.”

“Wait, you were  _ there _ ?” She turned to him, surprised. “How long have you been with us?” Blood rushed to her cheeks then as she remembered  _ another _ sunset, a younger Dimitri’s fingers laced tightly with hers. Seeing the size of the imperial army camped out before Garreg Mach, realizing the coming dawn might be their last, had given her the courage to take his hand. She wondered if it had given  _ him _ the courage to kiss her.

She hoped Lambert hadn’t been hovering around for  _ that _ .

“I’ve never truly left Dimitri, though I am not always present at his side. It is his grief and suffering that hold us here. I cannot move on while my son endures such things.” Lambert smiled sadly. “I saw quite a bit of you, right before the fall of the monastery. But you could not see me.”

“It must have been while I slept,” she replied, brow furrowed. “Her power is the only way I could have survived the fall, and five years of sleep after that. Perhaps in that time more of blessing awakened in me.” She glanced over at him. “You’re the first ghost I’ve seen, in any case.”

“I likely won’t be the last.”

Byleth didn’t know what to say to that.

When Lambert spoke again, it seemed almost as much to himself as to her. “The year he spent at the Academy with you was healing for him, and I thought we might finally find rest. But it was not to be.”

They spoke no more after that, just watched the sun drop at last beneath the hills. At some point, Lambert vanished, leaving Byleth alone with her thoughts.

***

“Get a  _ hold _ on yourself, Dimitri! This isn’t what  _ anyone _ wants!”

The unfamiliar voice rang through the deserted cathedral, though something about its echo seemed unreal. Byleth quickened her steps inside. Dimitri had been particularly difficult that day, and she’d expected to find Lambert here with him.

But it wasn’t Lambert; it was Felix.

Byleth gave up all pretense of quiet and hurried down the aisle in alarm. She knew Felix well enough to realize that his feelings for Dimitri were a great deal more complicated than the simple antipathy he pretended to. But she could think of no good reason why he would be here in the cathedral in the middle of the night, shouting at the prince he claimed to abhor.

It was as she got closer that she realized Dimitri was not simply ignoring Felix; he was unaware of him. She also got a good look at Felix’s face.

It wasn’t Felix.

It was his brow and jawline, and his same dark silken hair, tied back from his face. But it was a pair of cool blue eyes that looked back at her, not Felix’s amber.

“Glenn,” she breathed.

The lost Fraldarius heir looked back at her with consternation. “Can’t you  _ do _ something about this?” He gestured angrily at Dimitri, who hissed vows to the air that he would take Edelgard’s head. “This can’t keep happening.”

Byleth bit down on the urge to snap that she  _ couldn’t _ do anything, apparently, because she’d been trying for almost two months now and yet here they were. But she recognized that look in Glenn’s unfamiliar eyes, the one that Felix had when he was worried and scared and didn’t want to admit it.

She also flashed back suddenly to something Ingrid had said, about Fraldarius men not knowing how to express their feelings. Byleth’s admittedly limited experience with the Fraldarius family matched up.

So instead of snapping back at him, Byleth offered him the same hand she’d offered Lambert. “You can’t help him right now, Glenn,” she said quietly. “Neither of us can.”

Unlike Lambert, he took it, and let her lead him out of the cathedral, away from the raving prince. She stopped at the bridge, leaning against it to watch the darkened sky. Glenn leaned beside her.

She waited. Glenn was not Felix, but the younger Fraldarius was all she had to go on. And if Felix needed to talk, asking him directly was a surefire way to ensure he clammed up tight. The stars twinkled above them in the long silence.

“It was over fast at Duscur,” he said abruptly. Byleth glanced over at him but said nothing, trusting he would say more if he wanted to. He did.

“I don’t remember it all, but I remember realizing I was going to die. Wishing I’d done some things differently. But I thought, at least it was for a reason. I was going to die but Dimitri would live. He’d live and he’d take the throne and, well, shit, he was still a kid but I thought he’d grow up to be a good king. I thought it  _ meant _ something.”

“And look at us now. Was it all for nothing? Did I bleed out on that street so that the Kingdom would collapse anyway?”

“I hope not,” Byleth said quietly. “I intend to restore peace to the Kingdom.” She pressed her lips together, weighing whether or not to say it. “With or without Dimitri’s help.”

Glenn glanced over to her, eyebrows raised. “Hard to have a Kingdom without a king.”

Byleth looked straight ahead, not wanting to see the look in his eyes. It hurt to even say, but she knew it was the truth. “The Kingdom is more than House Blaiddyd. Dimitri has been missing for years, but the great houses have kept up the fight.  _ Your father _ has kept up the fight. The Kingdom’s people still need us, even if…” she swallowed. “Even if it means a Fraldarius or a Gautier on the throne.”

Gilbert would have called it treason. The other might have, too. But Glenn only nodded slowly and looked back at her, so like Felix and so not.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“So do I,” Byleth whispered. “So do I.”

***

Byleth had hoped Rodrigue would be able to get through to Dimitri where she could not. She was disappointed when the prince refused to abandon his mad plans to invade the Empire - but at least Duke Fraldarius could sometimes convince him to attend his own war councils. Byleth counted that as a win.

Really, the fact that Dimitri seemed at all happy to see him was a win as well. She was taking progress where she could get it, and trying not to feel that hollow of disappointment that he did not have that same depth of feeling for her.

That was selfish, and silly besides - Dimitri had known Rodrigue all his life, and in happier times had described the Duke to Byleth as a second father. He had only known Byleth a year, and anything more than friendship between them had been new and fragile when Garreg Mach fell. It should be no great surprise that it had not endured in her long absence.

Still sometimes, Byleth thought she caught Dimitri’s eyes on her, when he thought her attention elsewhere. It was foolish and naive to hope that his heart still held the embers of any feeling for her, buried beneath time and madness and grief.

She hoped anyway.

More affected by Rodrigue’s presence than Dimitri were Lambert and Glenn. The king’s joy when he saw his old friend again transformed his face, and suddenly he looked more like Dimitri’s older brother than his father. Byleth could see relief plain on the king’s features, that Rodrigue was there to help look after his son, and when the Duke spoke of her one night of his duty to help the prince Byleth learned that ghosts could shed tears.

Glenn seemed more conflicted, seemingly unsure if he wanted to be in his father’s presence or not. Byleth might have found that confusing once, but by this point she’d had enough experience with Felix to puzzle things out. Glenn loved and missed his father, and being unseen in his presence hurt worse than not seeing him at all. She wasn’t entirely surprised when she found him in the most Felix of retreats - the training ground.

But Glenn wasn’t swinging a sword until he was too tired to feel, like his brother was prone to do. He was watching Ingrid spar with Sylvain.

Byleth took up her space beside him leaning against the wall and waited.

“We were supposed to be married by now,” he said finally. “Our parents set it up, when we were babies. It’s not like I ever proposed, or anything. But…” he trailed off, not looking at Byleth, and she wondered if they’d run up against that Fraldarius inability to talk about feelings. Finally she broke the silence.

“Did you want to?”

“Yes.” The single syllable was deeply fraught, carrying the weight of hopes and anticipations and the dreams for a lifetime that would never come to pass. Byleth took his hand silently, and after a moment he squeezed it back.

“I’m glad she isn’t stuck though,” he said suddenly. Staring determinedly at the floor as he said the words, he reminded her so very much of his brother. “I don’t want her to live her life crying over me. We didn’t get our life together. I want her to live a good one for both of us.”

He lifted his eyes then, watching Ingrid expertly duck Sylvain’s lunge and slip under his guard to hold her blade to his throat. The Gautier heir laughed as he conceded, a rare genuine smile on his lips. Ingrid grinned back, her eyes dancing with triumph and a glint of something else. A bittersweet smile touched Glenn’s lips, and then Byleth was alone.

***

“Rodrigue, please,  _ please _ ! Don’t go, please…”

Dimitri’s broken sobs where the only sound that Byleth could make out over the rushing in her ears. She’d been too late to save him, too late in every way. She’d reached for the power of the goddess but it was spent, over and over and over on the nightmare that had been Grondor Field. And Byleth couldn’t regret it, not when she’d seen Ingrid fall from her slaughtered pegasus like a rag doll, not when she’d seen Ashe choke and go still beneath a dark miasma, not when she’d seen Claude’s clever eyes go wide with shock as blood spilled from his lips. Not when she’d heard Dimitri scream when the Imperial firetrap was sprung.

Now instead he wept like a child, cradling the dying duke in his bloody arms as he begged him not to go. For the first time, Byleth realized with a pang, his pleas were for the living.

Healers were called, she was assured by panicked aides, but they knew as well as she that any help would be too late. She could only hope the messengers sent to find Felix could be swifter.

From Dimitri’s desperate scream, she knew they were not.

Carefully Byleth approached him, dropping to her knees at the prince’s side. There were no words discernible now, just wrenching sobs that wracked his slender frame. She slipped an arm around him and simply held, heedless of his armor’s sharp edges as it bit into her side.

She felt Dedue’s presence as he did the same at Dimitri’s other side, his face set in grim lines as he gazed down at the duke’s body. A flash of movement caught Byleth’s eye, however, and she looked up.

Tears trailed from Rodrigue’s dark lashes as he clutched Glenn in a tight embrace. The younger Fraldarius returned it fiercely, damp marks tracing down his own cheeks. She couldn’t hear what they whispered to each other, but that was just as well - it wasn’t for her ears.

Byleth’s own eyes stung, and she turned her face into Dimitri’s shoulder. Together she and Dedue held their broken prince, as the fires of Grondor at last went out.

***

Dimitri had locked himself away when they returned, unwilling to grant even Dedue entrance to his chambers.

Felix had done the same; Byleth suspected they could not bear to face each other.

She had gone to bed herself at last, the exhaustion of the day settling on her like a rockslide. But it felt like she had not slept at all, when a voice suddenly awakened her.

“Lady Byleth.” A soft shake, the again more urgently. “Lady Byleth, please, I need your aid.”

Byleth wrenched her gritty eyelids open to find Lambert hovering beside her bed, brow creased with worry.

“My apologies, Lady Byleth, but the matter is urgent. Dimitri has left his rooms, and….”

Byleth sat up, shaking her head to clear it. Even through a veil of exhaustion, she understood what Lambert couldn’t say.

Dimitri was about to do something stupid, and she was the only one Lambert could communicate with. Which meant she was the only one who could do anything. She pushed her herself out of bed and hurriedly dressed.

She opened her strange new powers then, letting awareness of the world in. There - she sensed Dimitri, saddling a horse in the stables. She began to run.

She skidded into the courtyard just as he was leading his horse out.

“Where do you think you’re going?” She asked archly. He had the grace to flush.

“Enbarr,” he answered shortly, not meeting her eyes. “No one else will die for me. I’ll destroy Edlegard and - “

“You won’t,” Byleth interrupted, a shade of exasperation in her voice. She had been patient for months; it was beginning to wear on her. “You’ll fight your way through as many of her soldiers as you can, and when you can’t fight any more you’ll die, and all of this will be pointless. Rodrigue didn’t give his life for you to throw yours away.”

He recoiled; maybe it had been a low blow, but it was only the truth. Still, he gazed back at her with unshed tears in his eye - a gaze clearer than it had been since her return. Something in her softened.

“What would you have me do, then?” He whispered, and it had none of the biting sarcasm that had marked so much of his speech. Instead his voice held a note of pleading, and an almost terrible hope. A hope that she would have an answer for him?

Byleth took his hand, and said the only words she could. “Live, Dimitri,” she said softly. “Live for yourself, and know joy again.” She hesitated a moment, then drew his cold hand to her cheek. “Your father loved you, more than anything. Any ghost that says otherwise isn’t really him.”

Dimitri stared at her as the tears began to roll down his face. “Your hands are so warm.” He tentatively lifted his other hand to cover hers. “Were they always such?”

She turned her face to kiss his fingers in answer. They embraced, then, and she held him close as the rain slowed to a drizzle. Something teased at her awareness, and she opened her eyes to see the three figures over Dimitri’s shoulder.

Glenn was grinning fiercely, his eyes -  _ Rodrigue’s eyes _ \- aglow with triumph. He gave her a wave and faded, his form dissolving into glittering light. Rodrigue gave her a slight bow, his own smile warm, and faded to light as well, leaving Lambert alone.

The king moved closer, his face soft with affection. He smoothed his son’s dripping hair with a gentle smile.

“Farewell, Mitya,” he murmured, words meant for Dimitri that only Byleth could hear. “I’m so very proud of you. I will see you again, my little wolf.”

He lifted his eyes to Byleth. “And thank you, Lady Byleth. For everything. Watch over my son for me?” 

She gave him a nod, tears welling in her own eyes. Lambert gave her that dazzling Blaiddyd smile, and then he was gone.

Byleth watched the space where he had been, then closed her eyes and stroked Dimitri’s hair, drawing him closer to her. Her prince was damaged, certainly, by all that he’d seen and endured. But that terrible anger that had trapped his father and Glenn in the mortal world was gone. Dimitri was healing, and someday he would be whole.

“Come on,” she said encouragingly, taking both his hands in hers. “Let’s get inside and get warmed up.”


End file.
